


Fearful

by flickawhip



Category: Home Fires (UK TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 08:46:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12884271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flickawhip/pseuds/flickawhip
Summary: Steph and her worries.AU kinda.





	Fearful

Fear controls the village, and it’s clear that the girls need one another. The WI pulls together. Pat is long gone and she walks away from them as one. Not a single one will see her again. She is free at last, but still fearful. 

Steph knows, as she looks around the group that each of them is fearful of something, some are simple, Mim always worries for David, even now he’s home, Frances worries about the WI as a whole, Teresa worries about her choice in husband, much as she would never say so, but some are less simple. Alison is withdrawn, quieter than usual and she has always been quiet, Sarah fusses around Frances, worries about her sister. Erica... well, Erica is harder to know, she worries about her daughters, Steph knows that, she worries about Will, but there is something else. Something none of them talk about. She won’t tell them her own fears, she didn’t want to tell them how much she misses Stan, how much she hopes he will be safe, somehow. The farm is safe, at least, thanks to Teresa. 

As the war goes on it’s easier for them to lie to one another, but they also tend to let down their walls. Frances is less uptight, although she knows she needs to be cautious. Sarah smiles more. Teresa, eventually, walks away from her husband, denies him and chooses to tell them nothing of why. Alison seems less worried now that Teresa is free and happy again. David has flourished and Mim relaxes, she seems happier, she smiles with more freedom, and she seems to care more for the group, spending her days with the WI, and at work. Erica worries about Will less, although it’s clear that something has changed. Steph, though she won’t tell anyone, finds it easier to give Stan up for lost... she doesn’t feel any less lost, but then she knows now she can turn to the WI, for anything. Later, much later, she will learn that Erica has lost Will, complications nobody saw coming takes him from her suddenly, that Mim and Bryn have not yet made sense of what happened on the day she gave birth. She learns, much later, that it is easier for them all to lean only slightly on one another, but that, when she is needed, she can stand strong for any and all of them. 

When, finally, she learns Teresa’s secret, she can’t quite help but smile. All those years spent hiding and yet, suddenly, the walls are down for them all. It is easier now, the village has become bigger, the war effort stronger and, much as Steph knows she can’t afford to pay them, she is given no end of help with the farm. 

As the war finally ends, when every wall has come down between the WI members, it is easier for her to look at Mim and Erica and see friends, people who understand when she turns her thoughts to someone new, someone younger who somehow looks past her yelling, and she does yell, nearly endlessly, at her farm workers, at her land girls, and sees her as she really is. 

The WI find endless reasons to bring the girl to meetings and, finally, the two cannot ignore it any longer. She invites her into her life, and swears she can see her son smile. Stan hasn’t smiled since his father died and yet, as she walks away with her land girl, she knows she is safe.


End file.
